The Egg and Other Stories by Andy Weir | Book Review

The Martian is one of my favourite audiobooks of all time, and as I wait for Artemis to come out, I stumbled across this lovely little collection on Audible.

Before I get any further into this, I would like to point out that if you wish to listen to this audiobook, please don’t use one of your Audible credits – purchase it with your card. Since your credit costs £7.99 and this book is only a fiver, you’ll be throwing money down the drain!

As in my review for Flying Lessons and Other Stories, I’m going to be talking a little bit about each individual story and giving them ratings out of 5. Since there are quite a few stories to get through I won’t be going into huge detail on each (we’d be here all day if I did that!) but it should give you a taster and a general idea of my feelings on this collection, without spoiling anything.

Access

I see what Weir was trying to do here, and the element of surprise was there. However, it didn’t strike me as being overly clever or overly funny, despite the fact it had echoes of his writing style, it just wasn’t in the same league as his other works.

Antihypoxiant

Now we’re getting somewhere! If you enjoyed the Martian, this story’s going to be right up your alley. This uses all the science talk that we came to love in The Martian, and has a similarly cocky narrator. However, there was something about it that just felt a little less than awe-inducing, which is the only reason it’s getting 4/5 stars – but it’s a good place to go if you’re looking for something familiar.

Annie’s Day

This was my favourite story of the whole collection – and I wouldn’t have said that until the very last paragraph. I loved the twist in this story, and found myself listening to it again the second it finished – I even redownloaded the audiobook to let my sister hear it!

The Real Deal

This one was so sad! I never thought something so short could make me so sad! There was something really beautiful about this story, but it still had that traditional Andy Weir twist that, by this stage, we’ve come to know and love.

Bored World

This story was just a little flat for me. It had echoes of Illuminae (if you’ve read that) but it didn’t come close to its amazingness. Although this story was an okay listen, I wasn’t that keen on the on the sci-fi bit of this story, and the narrator left something to be desired, but it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever read.

The Mid Town Butcher

I saw this one coming a mile away, it was well written, but it was predictable as heck.

Meeting Sarah

This one was pretty cute I must confess, everybody loves a good time-travel story. I also really enjoyed the nature of the narrative in this one – the conversation on the carphone both placed it in time and allowed the narration to have a really natural retrospection, it worked really well.

The Chef

This one was my least favourite of all the stories, it just took it a bit too far for my liking. I feel like he really had to work for the shock in this one, and so it didn’t pack the emotional punch it would have needed to be a success. Just not the best.

The Egg

I didn’t really like this one either, despite the fact it’s the collection’s title story. It had crazy Bruce Almighty vibes, and the overall concept just didn’t seem to settle properly in my head – it didn’t leave me thinking ‘wow – that was really clever’, it was more of a ‘huh, well that was strange’.

Overall, I did really like this collection – even if it was awful I probably wouldn’t complain too much since it was so short, but I promise it wasn’t. Strangely, it’s high point was in the middle, with the first and last stories being the weakest parts – something that doesn’t tend to be common in a collection, but I suppose everyones different.

If you’ve read this collection make sure to leave me a message in the comments below, which story was your favourite? I’m always really interested to hear what you guys think.